World Series of Poker 2009 Betting Markets

Some of you may recall the end of last year my very short lived poker betting blog which died a bit of a death, as I predicted it would as soon as I started it. Well, its still a big interest of mine and as the World Series is upon us, I will be doing it again, within this blog as its obviously much easier.

Nothing much to report yet, I havent seen many markets for the WSOP at all. So far Bodog have a number of markets, all novelty based like 'highest placing author' and will Robert Bellande cash in the main event. Paddy Power usually have some very good markets which I expect to see turn up soon - they had some very good group bets like the best online player last longer market and a field for the $10,000 PLO.

BoylePoker do have plenty of markets and a good one for those people that simply want to bet on the players they have heard of, which is who will win the most money during the WSOP overall. Naturally Phil Ivey is the fave at 8-1 and as usual, a complete no value bet. He is likely to be gunning for a bracelet and a bracelet only, which means he will not be cashing that often unless he wins one. Scotty Nguyen would be my pick on that one, he is one a real heater at the moment, could be about to win a WPT title and has a bet with Mike Matusow that he can win $4 million in 2 or 3 years. He is at 16/1, I personally would want better than that to be honest.

There should be some good markets turn up, the $40,000 no limit event will be really interesting to see as the field is short and all big names. Lots of people will make the mistake of betting on Phil Hellmuth and I might be looking to lay him one way or another once the odds come out. Just because he has ten bracelets in no limit, it doesnt mean shit, because he is well known to do very badly against top pros. Instead of thinking of this as a bracelet event, think of it as an episode of high stakes poker - he has no chance imo.

I spoke to Paul Spilane of BoylePoker and he said that they are interested in listening to any suggestions for potential bets people may want to make, in particular any head to head match ups between two players, of any calibre. I'm going to be doing a bit of research and suggesting a few markets myself, so by all means drop me a line if you want to see some additional markets and I will see what I can do.

The SNG stuff is going well, I've only been playing smaller games this week while I remind myself how to play them ($40-$60) and I've had a nice little run so far. I think I will ditch the cash games for a month or two and see if I can recapture my old form, maybe start playing the $100-$200 games next week. It does mean, if I want a serious run at it, I will have to cave in and pay for the chargeback I got from pokerstars even though I think it was completely unjust. Stars is the only place to play SNGs and if I go back that, I think I will set some sort of Sharkscope/Battle of the Planets prop bet to up the ante a little.